Kottayam: A four-year-old girl, hailing from a Malayali family, met with a tragic death in Qatar due to suffocation arising out of extreme heat condition after she went locked up inside the school bus for hours, on her birthday.
The deceased is Minsa, daughter of Kochuparambil Abhilash Chacko and Soumya, hailing from Chingavanam in Kottayam district.
She was an LKG-1 student of Springfield Kindergarten at Al Vakra in Doha.
Once reaching the school premises in the morning, Minsa could not get down from the school bus as she continued with her sleep. The crew members locked the school bus thinking that everyone had got down from the bus.
In the afternoon, when the crew members entered the bus prior to the return trip, they saw the girl lying unconscious.
Though she was rushed to a hospital in Al Vakra, her life could not be saved.
The suffocation suffered inside the locked bus allegedly caused her death. The body of Minsa, which is now being kept at the hospital in Al Vakra, will be taken to Chingavanam after post-mortem.
Meekha, Minsa's sister, is a Class 2 student of MES Indian Public School.
Her father Abhilash, a designer-cum-artist, has been a resident of Doha for the last many years.
According to reports, the crew members of the school bus responsible for her death were arrested based on the complaint filed by the parents of Minsa. But there is no official confirmation in this regard as of now.
